When Dana Ford​​ walked into an unsigned senior showcase in Waukegan, Illinois in the spring of 2009, he wasn’t there with any specific targets in mind. He hadn’t even officially gotten an assistant coaching position at Tennessee State yet, but Ford knew that if he landed the job, the Tigers would need quite a few players.

One of the high school seniors in the gym that day was a long 6-foot-7ish swingman with the type of shooting ability that immediately stood out.

“This kid is better than me at that age and I played in the Missouri Valley,” Ford thought to himself. “So he can definitely play in the Ohio Valley.”

After receiving a position on John Cooper’s staff, Ford told the TSU head coach about the lanky kid with the sweet shooting stroke. Entering his first season running a Division 1 program, Cooper shortly thereafter made the trek with Ford to Proviso West High School in Chicago’s western suburbs. A few of the other players Cooper had been expecting didn’t show up, so his personal evaluation had to be made based on little else than a halfcourt 4-on-4 setting.

With six scholarships in his pocket, Cooper decided to bring Ford’s find in for a visit to the school’s Nashville campus. After meeting with the player’s coaches and family, Cooper ultimately decided that his combination of length and shooting made it worthwhile to offer a scholarship.

Robert Covington committed to Tennessee State, and it only took one individual workout for the coaches to realize that they had made the right move.

“Me and Coop looked at each other and said, ‘Man, we’ve got a pro,’” Ford said.

Some Sixers fans will make the argument that Covington, not Joel Embiid, is the player that best represents The Process. By plucking Covington out of the D-League in November 2014 and giving him the opportunity to develop in the NBA, former general manager Sam Hinkie found a long-term starter off the scrap heap because his strategy allowed the Sixers to take swings on players that most other teams simply couldn’t.

There is logic to that argument, but to get the full story, Covington’s process started long before then.

Robert Covington during the 2014-2015 season with the Sixers. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

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There isn’t a consensus on why a high school senior with Covington’s credentials — playing on a talented team, he won the West Suburban Conference Player of the Year — had only two Division 1 scholarship offers. It’s not like he was playing in the middle of nowhere.

The most accepted explanation is that Covington’s skinny frame scared off recruiters. Kevin Dockery, Covington’s mentor as well as his former AAU coach with the Illinois Bobcats, was told by Division 1 schools in Illinois and Indiana that they would look at Covington only if he went the junior college route and put on additional weight.

Covington weighed only 174 pounds when he stepped onto TSU’s campus, which had led to some questions in coaching circles about his toughness. Dennis Bryant also heard critiques of his son’s effort level, which he felt was a misinterpretation of Covington’s ability to make some areas of the game look easy. Bryant believed that looking at Covington’s well-rounded contributions in the stat sheet was all the proof necessary that he was playing hard.

Cooper said it took only two workouts for him to realize that any questions some of his peers had about Covington’s toughness were misguided.

“He just needed to get stronger,” Cooper said. “It wasn’t about him being afraid to engage and compete or any of those things. It was just a matter of, ‘Hey, if we can get some weight on him and go from there.’”

Covington’s scoring totals might have also kept him under the radar, as college coaches don’t quite have SportVU data or on-off splits available for high school recruits. Covington, who didn’t break out until later in his career at Proviso West, averaged double figures as a senior but his scoring totals weren’t necessarily huge for a top offensive option.

Tommie Miller, his high school coach, figures Covington could’ve averaged close to 30 points per game with a more aggressive mindset. Looking back on Covington’s career at Proviso West, Miller’s only quibble both on and off the floor with his go-to scorer was that he was too unselfish at times. And watching the Sixers on television now, he finds himself saying the same thing he said during Covington’s days playing for him: Rob, shoot the ball.

An unselfish mindset might have paid off as Covington moved up the ladder. After all, there are plenty of big-time high school scorers who fizzle out at higher levels when more is required of them than getting buckets. And when you talk to Covington’s coaches, almost all of them link the on-court approach to his character off the floor.

“When you’re high-character, humble, and coachable, then you listen and learn how to do things at each stop,” Ford said.

“The shooting and the length have always kept him on the floor. And once he gets on the floor, his character is what has allowed for him to stay on the floor and be successful.”

With the coaching change and plenty of roster turnover at Tennessee State, Covington averaged over 27 minutes per game as a freshman. Rapidly, he went from an unheralded high school recruit to averaging 11.5 points and 6.5 rebounds per game as a college freshman.

Not only did Covington get to play, but he also wasn’t the standstill shooter that Cooper believes he may have been if a high-major program landed him. Covington posted up and could try to make plays off the dribble at TSU, which allowed him to work on his weaknesses. And even though the Tigers stumbled to a 9-23 record, the coaches that passed him over took notice.

“After his freshman year, everybody called me and asked if he wanted to transfer,” Dockery said. “I was like, ‘Hell no, he good.’”

A bad, rebuilding team. Plenty of playing time. A coach who offered a ton of offensive freedom. Sound familiar?

And as TSU was undergoing its own sort of process, Covington could measure his own improvement when he went back to Chicago.

“I think what Rob started seeing is that, him playing everyday and growing and getting better, ‘I maybe start getting better than these guys,’” Cooper said. “’And maybe I was better than those guys.’”

Robert Covington, right, reacts from the bench during a TSU game in the 2011-12 season. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

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The story probably won’t have the same longevity as Michael Jordan not making his high school team as a sophomore, but Covington was cut from the basketball team at MacArthur Middle School in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.

He still played travel basketball, except for a time in seventh grade when there were a couple of Fs on his report card. Covington’s Pop Warner football team was in the playoffs at the time, but when Teresa Bryant saw her son’s grades, he wasn’t allowed to finish up the football season or try out for AAU basketball. In the following years, the message had apparently gotten through.

“He was on the honor roll after that,” she said.

According to Cooper, Bryant (who the coach affectionately calls “Mama B”) never once complained about her son’s playing time or any other aspect of his coaching style. In fact, he tells stories about how she implored him to push Covington harder.

Bryant is a believer in tough love, and even as her son started to creep onto the NBA’s radar at Tennessee State, she never wanted to be what she refers to as “that parent.”

“What they didn’t do with Rob is what a lot of parents do,” Ford said. “They create this illusion that kids are supposed to challenge authority. And they never created that in their house, so he’s always been coachable. And that’s only helped him as a player, and it’s helped him grow. The coach is never wrong in their household.”

Under Cooper’s guidance, Covington developed into a first-team all-conference player in his junior season as he led Tennessee State to the Ohio Valley Conference championship game. But after Cooper left to accept the head coaching job at Miami (Ohio), a torn meniscus affected a senior year that his mother admitted was a downer for Covington. He still managed to average 17 points and 8 rebounds in 21 games during the 2012-13 season, but the Tigers had taken a step back as a team.

Covington didn’t hear his name called in the 2013 NBA Draft, but before the night was over, the Houston Rockets were on the phone offering him a partially guaranteed contract. For Bryant, her son was in a familiar spot entering the NBA.

“The way we always look at it is he had to go a different route than other highly recruited people,” she said. “He had to prove himself even more than anybody else.”

Sitting in the cramped visitors locker room at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Jacob Pullen is getting ready for a preseason game against the Brooklyn Nets. Pullen, who is signed to a two-way contract with the Sixers, was two grades ahead of Covington when he entered Proviso West. After his freshman year, the future Kansas State point guard transferred to neighboring Proviso East.

That’s not a small thing. Proviso East and Proviso West is such an intense rivalry that the football and basketball games between the schools take place during the day just to control the crowd size. East has a richer basketball history, counting Doc Rivers and Michael Finley (who Brett Brown coincidentally compared Covington’s shot to) as two of its most famous alumni.

Despite being on opposite sides of the rivalry, Pullen and Covington are much more than basketball acquaintances. When the former was in Philly, they hung out close to every day. And Pullen is happy for Covington’s success.

“He grew into his own,” Pullen said. “He worked for everything that he got. Like a lot of other Chicago guys, he’s a blue-collar hard worker.”

Pullen knows Covington well, and the tidbit that stuck out from our conversation is that Covington once had around 30 blocks in a high school game as a sophomore.

30 blocks!?

“It wasn’t 30,” Dennis Bryant said. “I think it was either 26 or 27 blocks in one game. … They kept trying [him].”

Since Hinkie corrected his “draft-night mistake” and signed Covington three years ago this past Wednesday, his defense has seemed to make huge strides in a relatively short period of time. And whether or not Covington actually had 30 blocks, the idea serves as a reminder that he has always been blessed with a couple of very useful things on the basketball court: shooting and length.

Covington played seven games in Houston as a rookie in 2013-14, so he spent most of his time with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, earning D-League Rookie of the Year honors. Even then, the defensive tools were apparent to Nevada Smith, who coached the Vipers.

“He was an almost elite help-side defender at that point,” Smith said. “He was so long, he has such a great IQ. He was always getting deflections and steals on skip passes, cross-court passes.”

That level of disruptiveness has translated to the NBA, as Covington led the league in deflections a season ago. Offensively, the Vipers played the type of bombs-away style that the Rockets employ now at the NBA level. Covington, who Smith noticed mostly took above-the-break threes and wasn’t bothered much when there was a hand in his face, had the green light to fire 8.5 shots from beyond the arc per game.

“I inherited this gunslinger that just jacked threes,” Brown said.

For Brown, the Covington who didn’t shoot enough in high school didn’t exist. Hinkie used the last couple of roster spots to bring in tons of unheralded players during The Process, and while Brown wasn’t particularly fond of Covington’s shot selection, he at least saw the potential.

“Over time you started like looking at his body and realized if he put his mind to it — he’s an athlete and good people, you could wind him up to play defense,” Brown said. “Then you thought if you can do that and he can shoot, and we just sort of like watered down his version of what a good shot and bad shot is and really just let him play in a system, then maybe you could really have a chance to have a two-way player.”

Most of Covington’s coaches concluded that his on-ball defense lagged behind the plays he made shooting passing lanes. Since he was a senior at Tennessee State, Covington has worked out in the summers with trainers Jamal and Spencer Richardson in Nashville. And while the cousins used different on-court techniques like working with tennis balls to improve Covington’s recovery skills, the most important work they’ve done together has been studying film of NBA players, from point guards to power forwards.

“Really studying tendencies, looking at habits and finding ways for him to be disruptive on the defensive end,” Jamal Richardson said. “Because that’s the main thing. You’re not really going to stop guys, they’re in the NBA for a reason. The Kevin Durants and those guys, it’s hard to shut them down but you want to make them less efficient as possible.”

Robert Convington played 42 games with the Vipers in 2013-14, earning D-League Rookie of the Year honors. (Photo by Gabe Hernandez/NBAE via Getty Images)

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Ask around and you’ll learn a few things about Covington off the court that most people might not know. For instance, multiple friends swear that he’s an excellent dancer (“Rob’s got a little Odell Beckham Jr. in him,” Jamal Richardson says). Smith mentions that he rolled a couple of 200 games on off days in the D-League, a talent that was developed during weekly trips to the bowling alley with his family growing up. The ATF in his Instagram handle stands for “allergic to failure,” a motto that he and his father came up with a while ago.

But mostly, everyone comes back to the same general point: He’s a down-to-earth, humble guy who had to work hard to get where he is and an influx of $62 million won’t change that.

“He’s just a kid from Chicago living out his dream, but he’s still the same guy,” Thomas Steele said. “He’ll answer the phone if you need him to.”

Steele played basketball with Covington at TSU, and they’ve remained very close after college along with fellow teammate Tashan Fredrick. When Steele lived in Maryland a few years ago, he made frequent trips to the Wells Fargo Center. Now that he’s relocated to Nashville, he spends a lot of his summer with Covington.

Robert Covington celebrates after scoring against the Washington Wizards in the 2017-18 season opener. (Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images)

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The Sixers have wrapped up a preseason practice at their spacious facility in Camden, and Covington is getting up shots after practice. After every shot he swishes, Covington is chirping. Shooting against Pullen, the neighborhood rivalry could simply have the competitive juices flowing.

But more than anything, Covington looks comfortable in his own skin. Brown has seen a change from Covington in that regard since he first came to Philadelphia from the D-League, which he figures is only natural.

“He started claiming a role, he started feeling like this could actually be home,” Brown said. “And all those things led to him now feeling like, ‘This is as much my program as it is anybody’s.’ Like him and Joel have been with me the longest. And he’s got a right to think that. And he knows how we and me value him. And I just think all of us, when you know you’re wanted and you know you have a home, that you can just emerge as a human being and find different ways to talk and lead.”

After all this time, he has the combination of a home and no higher level of basketball to chase. No matter how the Sixers fare over the next few years, we can already say that the Robert Covington process has been a success.

Top photo: Sam Jordan/TSU Athletics

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Rich Hofmann covers the 76ers and Eagles for The Athletic Philadelphia. For last three years, Rich wrote about the 76ers and all other Philly sports at PhillyVoice. Follow Rich on Twitter @rich_hofmann.